


And A Place To Stand

by shihadchick



Category: Star Wars Legends: X-wing Series - Aaron Allston & Michael Stackpole
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 13:51:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8982520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shihadchick/pseuds/shihadchick
Summary: It was supposed to be a quiet, simple mission, Wedge thought.They have been so, so set up.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kayim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayim/gifts).



> This is AU from just before Starfighters of Adumar; diverging in terms of Wedge and Iella not getting back together.
> 
> Happy Yuletide, Kayim!
> 
> And many thanks to my very patient beta.

 

In the back of his mind, Wedge Antilles could feel a scrap of memory reassert itself; Ton Phanan, gesturing broadly over a lomin-ale, and quoting some holo—maybe even one of Face Loran's, Wedge wasn't sure, he'd not exactly spent much time watching holos as a teenager.  
  
"First you get the credits, then you get the power, then you get the wingman."  
  
Well, Ton had said "women", and had put on his most refined Imperial accent for it, mimicking Face's Imperial persona with almost cruel accuracy. Although if Wedge was remembering correctly, by that point in the evening Face had been in tears of laughter, and the rest of the squadron not much better off. Wedge had never been sure if the quote was one woman in particular or multiple women, and knowing Face and Phanan that… really could have gone either way.  
  
That memory could be painfully ironic in almost any circumstance. In this one in particular, Wedge had to admit that it really was exactly the sort of situation that Wraith Squadron found themselves in regularly. Had prided themselves on managing successfully.  
  
If only Wedge's evening had actually been intended to end up there, instead of what was rapidly becoming not just a comedy of errors but threatening to turn into a full-blown tragic farce.  
  
Well, for him, anyway.  
  
Scores of Imperials would probably find it pretty funny, if they ever heard about it.  
  
"So stop me if you've heard this one before," Wedge started. "A Corellian, a Tanaabian and an Agamaran walk into a bar…"  
  
The hulking brute in badly fitting stormtrooper armor opposite him frowned, and pushed his helmet back on his head to scratch his forehead, in what Wedge hoped was a demonstration of his forward planning skills and intellect. He pushed long blond hair out of his eyes—certainly not a regulation haircut, which had Wedge revise down a little his estimate of just how much trouble they were probably in. And at least neither of the two was pointing a blaster right at Wes' chest any more. Maybe they could get out of this in one piece. Maybe.  
  
"Huh?" Hulking Brute #1 said. "Where's the joke?"  
  
"You have to ask what they order," Wes says, cool as anything. Picking up the sabacc hand that Wedge was putting down, same as always.  
  
Though really, it wasn't as if it was his first time being threatened either. Or taken hostage or even—not that Wedge wanted to dwell on that outcome at all—getting shot in the line of duty.  
  
If only they'd been down there doing anything even remotely related to duty in the first place.  
  
Maybe then they would've actually had backup, rather than just the holdout blaster Wedge wore everywhere but in Council meetings as a matter of course, and whatever illegitimate weaponry Wes had snuck past the spaceport security forces.  
  
Then again, at least they'd been in this kind of situation before. More than once, even. Had spent most of their adult lives doing so, really.  
  
Wedge had been hoping to dial some of those near death experiences back a little lately. They'd had a solid standard month or so of actual boredom for a change. Enough that he'd been able to persuade himself it was a good time to go ahead and see about maybe changing some other parts of their lives.  
  
It had been so quiet, actually, that he'd gone past wary and into bored. And then into something that wasn't moping, whatever Hobbie's smart-ass remarks tried to suggest, but with too much time on his hands he'd started thinking about some of the things he usually managed to put off when other more important things were happening.  
  
Like how to resolve the fact that he was more and more aware as he got older and friends and teammates paired off and began to form families of their own that he wanted that, too. Wanted something like that, even. And Force help him, he was pretty sure he knew who he wanted to form that family with.  
  
He'd just come to the conclusion that he was going to be better off to finally have this conversation with Wes after all, and then General Cracken had come calling—or, rather, called Wedge into his own office, and smilingly handed over the details of a new assignment.  
  
It was meant to be quick; less than a galactic standard month, undercover on Gilbraith. Their assignment was to nose out what their planetary governor—an hereditary position held by one of the older families that had first settled the place, and called the Vorb for reasons Wedge still wasn't entirely clear on—was up to and why they were dragging their heels on signing up with the New Republic after having been initially ready to fast-track the process.  
  
Wedge had expected a full squadron assignment, but if the other Rogues were around then they were somewhere he wasn't aware of in other roles. Cracken had just handed over dossiers for him and for Wes, complete with ID and cred cards and a data pad with enough information to get them started, which wiped itself comprehensively once Wedge had read it twice.  
  
At least they were undercover as pilots, which meant they didn't need to worry too much about their stories holding up. They could talk the talk and walk the walk, and the job they'd been set up for—training the Vorb's private airforce—gave them a great deal of freedom, free time and—not that Wedge really expected they'd be allowed to keep it all—a very healthy salary. It would've been an attractive job for any half-decent pilot, and if Wedge didn't know Airen Cracken well enough to expect there was more going on than he'd been told, then he might have even accepted it at face value.  
  
They'd been stationed on planet for a week, settling in to their quarters and the job, and carefully listening to what their charges—and their superior officers—were saying. It had been so unexceptional that Wedge had been starting to almost consider it as a brief leave, albeit one where they'd had to spend every other evening so far in formal clothing.  
  
He'd gone through worse for the cause, that was for sure.  
  
Cracken had promised him it would be nothing like Adumar, which was some small comfort. Wes had mostly just muttered something wistful about his cloak, and Wedge winced. It'd taken him and Hobbie some serious planning to literally space that thing last time, and he didn't like his odds of repeating the feat if Wes found something else equally eye-searing. Thankfully Gilbran fashion seemed to be very much in line with Coruscant's, a small mercy that Wedge definitely appreciated.  
  
Still, even primed to expect something to happen, a week of extremely safe and boring work had made Wedge somewhere between antsy and complacent, and he'd thought, hey, what was the worst thing that could happen if they ducked out for a quiet drink?  
  
He should have known better, really.  
  
He hadn't at all expected to walk into a lower-level tapcaf and run face-first—quite literally—into a hostile shakedown of one of the New Republic's Most Wanted. Or Persons of Most Interest, to use General Cracken's preferred nomenclature for the shadowy agents who operated just outside of New Republic space and New Republic interests. Wedge figured that just meant that sometimes Cracken wanted them on his side enough to not arrest them even when they had just cause.  
  
As it was, getting out of this situation in one piece was going to take all of their not-inconsiderable wits, charm, good looks, better luck, and probably every credit in Wedge's wallet and the burner account he had access to under his fake identity, plus the extra that he'd mostly set up in case of emergencies. And this probably qualified.  
  
Unless—  
  
Wedge wrenched his attention fully back onto the problem at hand. It wasn't as if the blaster nudging at his hip didn't promote speedy and focused concentration.  
  
"What do they order?" asked Hulking Brute #2 obediently. He wasn't hulking so much as compact, but was an Ortolan, which meant he was more solid than he looked and could probably pack quite a punch—if it was still considered punching if it was with feet.  
  
Wedge hadn't seen an Ortolan in a fight before—he'd met a few musicians in some of the seedier dives the Rebellion had sent him through over the years, but that was about it. But just because he'd never seen one with a blaster didn't mean he wasn't just as dangerous as his human-looking partner. The Ortolan was the one who'd been shaking down the woman who appeared to be running the place when Wedge and Wes had made their inadvertent interruption to business matters.  
  
Wedge had just been looking for a quieter corner of the bar to actually have a conversation, and had walked right into what was probably usually the kitchen, and also into the business end of the first guy's blaster. Given the threats he'd been making at the time, Wedge wasn't crediting him with much imagination. That was also probably for the best.  
  
Wedge caught Wes's eyes and nodded every so slightly, and then looked over at the bar owner, hoping she would also catch what they were setting up.  
  
"A lomin-ale and a chaser of RUN—" Wes said, his voice pitching up on the last word as he ducked away from Hulking Brute #1 with a lithe twist and kick that Shalla must have taught him, and he threw the glass of sun-fruit liqueur he'd been holding at Hulk #2 to buy a little extra time.  
  
Hulk #2 got an arm up in time to save himself from being clipped by the heavy plas-steel tankard, but the contents soaked his arm and head, and as if choreographed, the woman yanked one of the barely-to-code power cables from the wall beside her with one foot and whipped it—still sparking at the end—at him in one smooth motion.  
  
Wedge hadn't got close enough to Wes' drink to smell what it was—or close enough to Wes to smell it on his breath—but it was clear that whatever it was, it was about as alcoholic as possible, because the spray of liquid coating their antagonist lit up immediately with a soft whump, and he dropped his blaster as he batted desperately at his face and arm, throwing himself to the ground to try and put out the flames.  
  
So for desperately uncreative bad guys, they at least had decent training, Wedge thought distantly in the back of his mind, as he executed his own dive out of the line of fire, one that had the benefit of sending him right past the prone minion and let him scoop up his discarded blaster on the way.  
  
Things were looking up.  
  
* * *  
  
The yelling, screaming and smoke coming from around the corner which had previously only been sending out drinks via droid had alerted the rest of the patrons of the tapcaf, by the looks of it.  
  
Aside from one elderly Ithorian who was nursing his beverage by the door and didn't appear inclined to shift for anything up to and including the arrival of an Imperial battle station, the majority had stampeded for the exits at much the same time that Wes, Wedge, and their new friend did. That had the joint benefit of causing enough confusion that that it probably wasn't going to be obvious which direction they were running in, and meant that if the cut-price muscle whoever the local crime-lords were had employed did want to start firing indiscriminately there were plenty of targets to lower their chances of getting hit. Not that Wedge was terribly fond of getting innocent bystanders caught up in his problems.  
  
A block or two up from the tapcaf Wedge took a quick look over his shoulder and couldn't see any evidence they were being followed, so he dropped back into a fast but hopefully less attention-getting walk, reaching over to get a tight grip on the bandoleer slung over their rescued victim's shoulder. On her other side, Wes did the same.  
  
"So," Wedge started, spotting a likely looking alley—well lit and not too disgusting even this far down in Gilbraith's lower levels—and he marched her into it, turning so he could watch their six as well as start asking the important questions. "Now that we've got out of there, mind letting us know what you're up to here?"  
  
"I don't know what you're talking about," she blustered. "Those men were—were thieves, wanting a payoff. That's all. Thank you for your assistance, but I should return and call the city police now."  
  
"Uh huh," Wedge said skeptically. "Nice try, but if there's anything back there you want, you're going to have to level with us first."  
  
"I don't know what you mean," she said.  
  
Wedge sighed. "I don't know your name—"  
  
"Jarash," she started to say, and shut her mouth fast off Wedge's look.  
  
"I don't know your real name," he corrected. "But I've spent enough time in General Cracken's office over the years to see your holo on his Wall of Fame. You're Pa Kourrh. Or at least, that's the name you used to go by."  
  
She sighed, this time, the tense resistance melting into something more at ease, more—more dangerous, Wedge thought, and his fingers tightened without his quite intending to on the trigger of his blaster. Cracken's holo description said she wasn't violent, but still had her marked as 'extremely dangerous', and Wedge hadn't reached almost thirty without knowing when it was better to play it safe sometimes.  
  
"I suppose that answers the question about how you knew I was from Agamar. And you can call me Kourr," she said. "No use in arguing with such fine young men, is there?"  
  
From her other side, Wes snorted. "That approach isn't going to work either," he said. "No offense, but I don't hit on women who nearly get me shot before we've even been introduced."  
  
Wedge bit back a snort of his own, because that was absolutely untrue and they both knew it.  
  
Kourr sighed, more heavily this time, and then shrugged. "Well, that identity is clearly compromised, so I suppose I had better make the best of things. You couldn't help a girl get off-planet under the radar, could you?"  
  
They probably could, but Wedge was going to wait around first to find out whether or not they <em>should</em>.  
  
Being a victim of an attempt at extortion or kidnapping wasn't a crime—at least, not on Coruscant, and not on Gilbraith. On some other planets in the Outer Rim, sure. Well, Wedge corrected. Not on Gilbraith unless it was the Vorb's security forces doing the kidnapping, and they seemed too attached to their shiny uniforms and carefully written procedures to slum it in the lower levels of the locks and docks area just to arrest a thief. But there was something that just didn't add up about Kourr's story and her demeanor, and it wasn't just the fact that Wedge had recognized her.  
  
"You're supposed to be the best thief in the galaxy," Wes said reasonably to her. "Surely you can manage that by yourself."  
  
Kourr shrugged again, and then looked heavenward. Wedge resisted the urge to follow her gaze. There probably wasn't anything up there, and if there was, they all had much bigger problems.  
  
"How about you come back with us and we sit down and figure this out," Wedge suggested. If she was under cover near the spaceport, there was probably a good reason. Or, he corrected, a bad one.  
  
"Mmm," she said. "Yeah, no. Thanks for the save, boys, but I've got places to be, ancient Mandalorian artifacts to steal."  
  
"You can't just announce you're going to commit a crime to members of the New Republic military," Wes said, indignantly. Wedge would've protested Wes breaking cover like that, but he was equally sure that she'd made them, and getting information was more important than giving up data she already had.  
  
"I think I just did," she said. "Look. It's not really stealing when someone doesn't pay you for the job you did for them. It's just… proactive debt collection. And besides, we're not even in the New Republic. You don't have jurisdiction."  
  
"Nothing scares me like someone who'll drop the word 'jurisdiction' into a sentence," Wes said, directing that one to Wedge, before turning back to Kourr. "You know what I meant."  
  
"And what are you going to do about it, huh?" she said, and Wedge bit the inside of his cheek, thinking hard.  
  
She had him dead to rights there, he had no idea what to do about it. They obviously couldn't turn her in—she'd be whisked away to whatever collection of Hutt spittle was currently ruling the black market in this system, most likely with half a dozen bounty hunters in tow—but they couldn't exactly take her prisoner themselves, either.    
  
For one thing, much as Wedge might like to—and might have some strong suspicions about her involvement in various schemes back in the Core worlds—he really didn't have any evidence, and they couldn't just hold her on reputation alone. If the Republic started doing that they wouldn't be any better than the Empire had been.  
  
Besides, with just the two of them on-planet there wouldn't be any way to guard her without making themselves vulnerable in some other way. They were going to have to let her go.  
  
Wedge sighed.  
  
"You're going to have to let me go," she said.  
  
Wedge startled and let his brows draw together in a light frown. Had she—he'd never seen any suggestion she could do the Jedi stuff that Luke could, but that might also explain some things.  
  
"I'm not a Jedi," she said, with an eye roll that could probably be seen from either of Gilbraith's moons. "Your sabacc face is terrible, I could tell what you were thinking."  
  
"Can we tell you to give up on whatever you're planning and hit hyperspace before we call in backup?" Wes asked, lightly enough that it almost sounded like he was joking, rather than quite serious, the hint of a vibroblade wrapped in silk. "You won't like us with backup."  
  
"Cute," she said, although Wedge suddenly got the impression she wasn't talking to either of them any more. "It's been swell. See you around, boys."  
  
Wedge braced—he wasn't sure what for, it wasn't like he hadn't just run the sims in his head and figured they were going to have to let this one go regardless—but she just shrugged her shoulders and then scratched the back of her neck, her elbow coming up in a motion that Wes braced for just in case it was the prelude to an attack after all. And then something crunched in the alley behind them, and Wedge spun around just in time to see the flash and crackle of a Kessel-style improvised grenade rolling into the brick wall, painting it with short-lived bright green chemical flames.  
  
"What the—" Wedge said, and then realizing his mistake, he turned back just in time to see Kourr vanishing, pulled up the side of the building by a rope and pulley, one she must have fired off with the same of sleight of hand that had bounced the flash-bang behind him.  
  
"How did she even-?" Wes asked rhetorically. "I think I'm professionally jealous. We were pirates for almost a year and I never got to make a getaway that cool. Do you think she takes students?"  
  
Wedge was professionally <em>insulted</em>, when he examined his instinctive response. Whether that was because she didn't seem to care about them knowing her plans, or because part of him still remembered the time they'd spent playing pirate he couldn't say, but it was deeply irritating.  
  
If for no other reason than now he was going to have to shelve his original plan for the evening and focus on trying to figure out exactly what was going on. Had she really meant there was some sort of ancient Mandalorian something that she was intending to steal? Wedge didn't recall ever hearing much about the Mandalorians at all, other than the legendary Boba Fett. And their armor, of course. But it had been too specific a comment to be taken in jest, surely.  
  
"Wes, we weren't pirates," Wedge corrected, choosing one battle to fight then and there. "We were under orders, that's—privateering at the most."  
  
"Pirates," Wes repeated stubbornly, and then he shifted his weight and his face fell in the most comically obvious crestfallen expression that Wedge had seen since a certain evening where he'd sent Wes off to try and recapture 'Lt Kettch' while naked and covered in Ewok food. It had been a memorable evening.  
  
Wedge felt his stomach sink.  
  
That expression couldn't be a good sign in these circumstances, as much as he'd hoped to eventually relive some of the more, ah, entertaining parts of that evening.  
  
"Uh, boss," Wes said, and that definitely meant they were in trouble. "Do you still have the keycard for our quarters?"  
  
Wedge felt his own pockets, with dawning suspicion and the distinct sensation of being in a turbolift that was descending at close to lightspeed. They were empty.  
  
"Oh, Sithspit," Wedge said, disgusted.  
  
"We are so screwed," Wes agreed, and slumped against the alley wall next to Wedge.  
  
That was—  
  
Definitely going to be a problem.

* * *

 

"So we're both missing our code keys," Wedge said, pushing the spice cellar around on the pitted table of the tapcaf they'd agreed silently to set up shop in while they figured out their next moves.

Wedge had stuffed a couple of credits into his pockets automatically earlier that evening, and apparently Kourr had had enough pity on them to not take those, although she had also helped herself to the rest of his wallet.

"And our cred cards," Wes added. "And we don't have backup, or even an encrypted comm to use on this planet, and the droids are both back in the hangar with our X-Wings, which we can't access without our code keys."

"That's about it," Wedge agreed glumly.

"So why can't we just go to the city security forces and make this their problem?" Wes asked.

It was mostly rhetorical; he knew as well as Wedge did why that was probably a bad idea. And the fact it would be embarrassing was only part of it.

The governor of Gilbraith was still publicly making all the right noises about cooperating with the New Republic and signing up fully, but Wedge wasn't under any illusions about how having highly ranked members of the military working in secret was going to go down if that came out. And having any kind of conversation whatsoever with the security forces was going to invite more scrutiny than he really wanted to deal with.

Even if they contacted their supervisor and claimed they'd just lost their access cards—a drunken night out had happened to more than one of Wedge's subordinates over the years, it couldn't possibly be unprecedented in any chain of command—that was still going to cause more trouble than he liked to think. At the very least, they'd still have to go through another eye-rolling lecture from the Chief of Security. She'd told them how lucky they were to be assigned the Unaccompanied Visitor passes in the first place, and—

That had to be it, Wedge thought.

Their passes. Either Kourr was the most phenomenally lucky thief in the galaxy, taking advantage of her would-be rescuers and finding them significantly richer than she should have imagined, or they had been very carefully set up.

"Do you get the feeling maybe something bigger is going on here?" Wedge asked, looking up from his cup of caf to meet Wes' gaze. Wes hadn't even touched his drink, which Wedge figured meant he was thinking through much the same decision tree that Wedge was.

"Yep," Wes said. "I feel like one of those cute baby banthas that's being herded towards the sandcrawler, and doesn't know that it's not all grain and treats on the other end."

Wedge blinked. Looked at Wes and blinked again. "That's quite the metaphor, Wes." He looked down at the menu flickering on the viewscreen installed in the table for a moment, and then frowned as a fairly obvious conclusion leapt to mind. "Was that a suggestion about how you're ready for dinner?"

"Well we didn't eat yet," Wes pointed out practically. "We'll be much better at solving weird problems and hunting down the scum of the galaxy after we refuel. Also, you're the only one with credits left."

Wedge couldn't argue with that.

They called the server over—a battered looking EP-9 droid that spoke in a low monotone, and just repeated their orders back to them before trundling back to the kitchen—and Wedge was privately relieved by the speed with which their meals came back. They looked like they probably weren't going to poison them, either, which was a relief since it wasn't as if Wedge wanted to think about how they were going to get back to their quarters, let alone a private 'fresher any time soon.

Eating didn't take long either; they'd both been pilots too long to be used to lingering over meals when you could be interrupted at any moment, so after a few minutes Wedge pushed his plate to one side and sat up straighter.

"So. Next steps."

"I've been thinking," Wes said. "She said Mandalorian art or something, right?" Wedge nodded. "Well, when she got my wallet and our access cards, the one thing she didn't take was my data pad. And I'm no slicer, but—"

Wes pulled the data pad out of his pocket, punched something in, frowned, and then typed something else before turning it around so the screen faced Wedge.

"I remember one of the kids mentioning something about this to his buddy yesterday," Wes said. "You know how obsessed the Vorb is with their ancestors, well. Apparently one of them was distantly related to Boba Fett. And it wouldn't surprise me if his little storehouse of art and weapons and dusty old tapestries also had—"

"Something that belonged or claimed to belong to Fett," Wedge finished.

It made a certain kind of sense. The Vorb was exactly the kind of rich, spoiled aristocrat who was more inclined to collect treasures than set policy, and secretly collecting relics that might have belonged to an even more famous ancestor sounded entirely plausible.

"We need to get back out to the Vorb's private quarters," Wes said, nodding. "If he's keeping it anywhere it'll be around there."

"And with our access cards she can get access to the tunnels," Wedge said.

The Vorb's security was somewhere between Imperial paranoia and a set of priorities that had to be distinctly Galbran in nature. He had bodyguards at all times, and a palace outside of the city proper that was surrounded by both modern shields and an archaic wire design that sparked blue with spillover electrical energy at its points, forming a repeating infinity loop between wooden palings that marked out a physical border of each building. It looked dramatic—Wedge figured the association with the Emperor's Force Lightning was probably not an accident—but it couldn't be terribly effective.

He hadn't looked all that closely, since as he'd repeated to Wes, the joke old and worn in by then, they really didn't have to blow up everything they saw eventually, but he didn't think there was much in the way of redundancy systems or backup generators. If nothing else, there was no room for them. Not with the low ceilings and the way the walls of the palace almost touched the fencing.

Which meant that if they could get inside the building, they could probably find Kourr and figure out what she was up to and stop her. And if possible, do so in a way which wouldn't leave the Vorb suspicious of them either.

No small order on short notice, really.

"I think we're going to have to take down the generator," Wedge said, tapping his fingers on the table as he thought. He picked up Wes' data pad and punched in a few queries to the planetary 'net. The information he was after wasn't classified—wasn't that a nice change—and it didn't take much more time to tease out a direction for them to go in, and the beginnings of a plan.

"Where's Corran in an X-Wing when you need him?" Wes asked rhetorically, but he followed Wedge out of the tapcaf willingly enough as they set off for their first supply point.

* * *

Judicious application of Wedge's rapidly dwindling stash of cred chips, Wes' unending supply of charm and low key flirtation, and some blatant theft of their own saw them collect everything they hoped to need in the space of just under an hour.

"We're going to return it or pay them later," Wedge said stubbornly. "Overpay them, even. The nice thing about being a Gen—in my position is I get to dictate the costs of my own operations."

"Uh huh, your operation now, huh?" Wes said skeptically, and then, under his breath, added "Pirates again." Not nearly as sadly as Wedge might have hoped.

Wedge pretended he hadn't heard a thing.

Getting to the outskirts of town where the Vorb's main residence was situated was easy enough. Wedge found an unattended speeder, marked up in the colors of one of the gangs that operated in and around the spaceport, and covered Wes while he hotwired it. Given the dusty operational manual tucked under the dash, it looked like it had originally belonged to the Empire, or at least the Imperial forces that had been stationed on Gilbraith, right up until they'd been subsumed back into the Vorb's private security forces or escorted offplanet when the planetary forces had overthrown the remaining Imperial presence after Endor.

"We let most of them stay on the inside of the shuttle, even," one of the more bloodthirsty junior pilots had confided, sitting in the canteen before one of their training sessions. And then he'd added, "That's what my da told me, anyway," and Wedge had nodded and plastered on a fake smile and laugh, and thought again that he might be getting too old for all of this.

The urgency and panic of both Death Star missions, and everything that had come in between and after seemed both eternally present, and also to somehow be receding into the distance quicker with every passing day. It was a disquieting feeling, and one that Wedge was yet to quite resolve for himself. Then again, the day they seemed to be entirely and safely in the past, that would be the point where he could safely resign his commission.

He and Wes stashed the speeder in the fold of a hill, hoping that there would be few enough vehicles passing—either by road or overhead by air—that it would stay unnoticed. They might need it again to make a quick getaway.

"Just like old times, huh?" Wes said, managing to tap into Wedge's train of thought as unerringly as ever. "Like I always say, if you're too old to wriggle on your hands and knees right up to a sentry point to break into a planetary governor's residence, well, you're too old."

"I'd like to hear you repeat that even once more now," Wedge said, and grinned when Wes's only response was to jab him in the stomach with his finger as he hissed a curse. "Also, shut up, what happened to stealth, huh?"

Wedge wasn't actually too worried at that point; he knew full well that Wes would be as silent as ever by the time they were actively in auditory range of any possible sentries or listening devices; and they'd be able to hear the hiss and crackle of the residence defenses before they would be in any danger of running into them. There were some benefits to doing things the old fashioned way, although to Wedge's mind they fell mainly in the area of benefiting the person planning to take down the defenses.

The underbrush surrounding the residence showed signs of having been let to run wild in the last couple of years, the marks of previous pruning and clearing slowly being grown over, and they were able to approach the fence line under cover much more closely than Wedge would have dared to hope.

Even better, the sentry point by the road appeared to be unattended.

Wedge crawled back on his hands and knees to where Wes was waiting with the scavenged rucksack of their supplies, and sketched out a quick tactical update.

"Should we see if we can just… walk right in?" Wes asked, frowning. "If there's no one at the gate, maybe Kourr and whoever's working with her already beat us to it."

"Hrm, maybe," Wedge said. "But if she has our access cards, she could've just taken the hovertrain from the docks without even necessarily seeing anyone else. And—I'd bet a bottle of Rylothean wine that whatever she was wearing under that jumpsuit at the tapcaf is a Vorb security forces uniform, or one that looks close enough to one."

Wes nodded slowly. "That would fit with what I remember about her MO too. She's meant to be the sort of obsessive planner who has a solution for every problem on the job."

"But we're better," Wedge said.

Wes nodded. "We are. When we're prepared. And know what we're up against. And have better resources."

Wedge winced. "That's the spirit. Well, two out of three isn't bad, huh?"

"Let's do this," Wes said.

They moved through the underbrush away from the gate, parallel with the fence, until they were out of direct line of sight with the guard house. Just because they couldn't see anyone in there didn't mean it was unattended, and Wedge had too many queasy memories of Imperial bases and Moff's palaces seeded with anti-personnel mines and all sorts of other unpleasant surprises. Breaking in just felt safer.

It also felt deeply familiar in a way that Wedge was well aware he shouldn't actually be enjoying, on some level. But it had been a long time between missions where he'd been able to do more than be a figurehead, or have only the slightest effect on the outcome of an operation. It was the familiarity of the situation messing with him, he decided. And the company.

Wes took a couple of silent steps away from cover, looking left and right, and then up and down, sharply. Wedge held his breath, listening hard, and didn't see or hear anything either. Once Wes had assured himself the coast was clear he gestured and Wedge followed him, not quite as silently, but not bad, all things concerned. He wasn't entirely out of practice.

It was the work of moments to set up a disruption loop to take out the electrical shielding, and Wedge paused for a moment to be grateful once again for all the tips Lt Page and the rest of his commandos had taught him over the years. And

to be grateful that the current Vorb had not yet decided to modernize their security system.

They waited another moment—ten seconds that seemed to drag out to an eternity—and when there was no audible alarm, or any sounds of a response being marshalled, he and Wes stepped through the loop they'd taken out of the fence and onto the grounds.

The underbrush on the palace side of the fence was similarly light, although gave them just enough cover that Wedge didn't feel so painfully exposed. If he'd been in charge, he'd have got some of it removed for clearer lines of sight, but the Galactic war had only touched Gilbraith lightly. They'd only been on planet for a couple of days before Wedge had realized a lot of things he took for granted as security requirements were things that offended a Gilbran aesthetic sense.

On the positive side of the ledger, it made it significantly easier for them to break in.

* * *

 

“Well this is not what I was expecting to find,” Wedge said, eyes wide.

Their discussion in the speeder on the way to the palace hadn’t covered as much as Wedge would usually prefer in terms of planning, but this makeshift operation was possibly the most haphazard one he’d ever been a part of, and he’d been with the Rebellion since before Yavin 4.

They’d had one visit to the palace earlier in the week, as honored guests, but Wedge wasn’t under any illusion that they’d seen everything, or even the majority of the residence. That visit had involved a courtesy tour of the Vorb’s private shuttle hangar, followed by a lengthy semi-formal event in the ballroom, complete with plenty of tiny plates of bite-sized foods and a dizzying array of men and women of all species in whatever their equivalents of dressed to the nines were.

Thinking about that just made Wedge remember the plate of surprisingly delicious tiny avians that he’d gone back to more than once. The crunch had been quite satisfying. And thinking about _that_ just made his stomach growl again. Arranging what they thought they’d need to break in had taken some time; taking surface transport all the way out to the palace had taken even longer, and the meal they’d had at the tapcaf before planetary midnight now felt an awfully long time ago.

And thinking about food was also making him feel just the slightest bit out of sorts, because what they were looking at—

Well, this scene was certainly not going to feature on any of the About Our World holos that they showed tourists on the shuttle down to the surface.

“Is that—?” Wes asked rhetorically, sounding fascinated.

“I think Mirax told me about this once,” Wedge said, distantly aware that at least they were both keeping their voices down.

Not that he thought the Vorb had any chance of hearing them, since he was clearly very much distracted by the glowing tangle of fibres he was arranging—licking his fingers after every minute adjustment—around two giggling young women. Who were wearing... very little. Although they were certainly wearing more covering than the Vorb. And neither of them was the woman who had been pointed out to Wedge as the Vorb’s consort-ruler.

“How does this even come up in conversation?” Wes asked, eyebrows raised. “‘Hey Wedge, turns out some of my clients use glitterstim for... bondage’?”

Wedge shrugged, and tried to look away. They were meant to be tracking down Mandalorian artifacts, or, more accurately, the thieves trying to steal said artifacts, not playing accidental voyeurs. And depending on the Gilbran charter of laws, this might not even be illegal. It was certainly not something they should be staring at like ignorant farm boys on their first trip to the big city.

“I made the mistake of asking why so much spice got shipped off Kessel if there weren’t that many glitbiters around these days and she, uh, educated me.”

“Well, now I’ve seen everything.” Wes paused, in the middle of turning away from the casually ajar door to the underground room they’d discovered. It was down a suspiciously well-lit and well-trodden set of stairs tucked in the corner of an anteroom just off the ballroom, and if this was what went on down there regularly, Wedge couldn’t believe there wasn’t a guard or something to keep people out. Or maybe they just all knew better. His attention went back to Wes as he glanced at the Vorb again, cheeks pink, and muttered, “Definitely everything.”

Wedge just stared at _Wes_ in fascination, because was Wes embarrassed? Wedge couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Wes so much as blush. Wes was usually shameless, and delighted in that fact. It was one of the constants of the galaxy, something that Wedge relied upon.

“Right, okay, we should keep looking,” Wedge said quietly, and tried the handle of the next door down. It was an old-fashioned type, with a knob that turned in his hand, made of resinwood if he was any judge, as was the door itself. The Vorb had expensive taste in everything, it seemed like. There was no window in this door, and the reason for that became quickly apparent, as the door swung silently open to reveal banks of holoscreens, all hooked up to the cameras scattered around the estate.

Wedge felt his stomach sink. They hadn’t seen any cameras and yet the operators had to have been aware of them at least since they’d made it inside the main building, if not sooner.

“Took you long enough,” said a dry voice from the corner, and Wedge’s head snapped around to see Kourr leaning—lounging—against the wall, her head tilted to one side consideringly. “Blasters on the floor now, please. Kick them this way.”

Wes and Wedge complied, moving carefully and keeping their hands clearly visible at all times. Wedge was not enjoying this deja vu.

A Bith woman Wedge had almost missed lurking in the corner stalked over at Kourr’s wave and collected both weapons, before withdrawing behind Kourr and starting to pack a canvas bag with quick, economical movements. Packing away whatever they’d been doing to the vid recordings, Wedge thought.

Taking a slow breath, he let his eyes move around the room more carefully, making an effort not to actually move his head or make any kind of a threatening motion. She had three others working with her; the Bith woman and—Wedge sighed—both of the erstwhile ‘stormtroopers’ from earlier. They had been so, so set up.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Wedge said weakly after a moment. The slumped figures piled in the corner of the room suggested there had indeed been security on site previously, and also that they’d already been taken care of. Wedge was fairly certain he could see enough movement to guess they’d just been stunned, which made him feel a little safer. People who left their blasters set to stun could usually be reasoned with.

Besides, how she reacted to even such a weak taunt was going to give them more information, and he was very aware that while he still had a blaster, it wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination going to be able to train it on her before one of her associates stunned him. Or worse. Better to leave it tucked inside his boot until he had a better chance.

“Why couldn’t you have stayed in the city, hrm?” she asked. “You were supposed to go running to your handler or at least the supervisor, this is going to make our plans trickier.”

“What are you talking about?” Wedge asked. More intel was always good.

“Da’san says he’s got it all,” the blond human said, raising his voice to talk over top of Wedge, tapping a finger to the earpiece that Wedge hadn’t even noticed in their abbreviated fight. “Can we please get out of here now? I feel like a sitting duck here.”

“We’ll meet him in the hangar bay,” Kourr said decisively. She jerked her head towards the Ortolan. “Would you go cover him on the way back through, I’m not happy that he’s there without backup.”

“He can take care of himself,” the blond man said, in a clear attempt to reassure her. “But we should definitely get moving, this op has taken longer than it should have already.”

“Who are you people?” Wes asked.

“We’re cleaning up a mess,” Kourr said, and then correctly reading Wedge’s instinct to argue about just what that meant, because while the Vorb had some odd habits and maybe some immoral ones, he didn’t seem to be the kind of peculating, venial evil that Wedge had spent most of his career fighting against. “No, not like that. The Vorb has made some, hrm, enemies, in the black market? And they were able to source some data they could use to blackmail him. So we’re… correcting the situation.”

Whatever way Wedge turned that around in his head, it didn’t _sound_ like assassination, which meant—he wasn’t sure what that meant.

“We got the original recordings,” her associate said, with an eyeroll that made Wedge think he wound up translating for his—boss, he was pretty sure—quite often. “And now we have the backups, and as a thank you, we’re removing the source of the original recordings so no one else can tap into it either.”

“Very succinct, Three,” she said, and nodded towards the door. “Let’s get moving.”

“But you’re a thief,” Wedge protested. “How is this—why?”

“They installed a miniature holocomm in a suit of Mandalorian armor,” Kourr said. “Once we remove it, there’s a thriving market for Mandalorian relics. Who knows, the Vorb may even buy it back some day.”

“Whoever buys it, they better clean it thoroughly first,” Three muttered. “That guy is way too into his ancestors.”

Wedge hid a shudder, and noted Wes was doing the same.

“Anyway,” Kourr said, with emphasis, “if we’re done here, can we please get moving?”

“Can we have our access cards back?” Wedge asked. It didn’t hurt to try, he figured, and for people who’d been taking pains to make them believe they were all in danger several hours ago, they were being remarkably calm and forthcoming now.

“Mmm… no,” Kourr said, and then coughed, clearing her throat. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, sorry.”

“Uh huh, sure.” Wes said. “Wow, you’re a really bad liar.”

“Let’s just focus on getting out of here without blowing our cover, shall we?” Kourr said.

“I still don’t understand what you’re doing,” Wedge said. “Where’s your angle? If you’re stealing from the Vorb, there’s plenty of other things you could take as well. You could even blackmail him yourself, if you’ve got rid of the, uh, third party there.”

He didn’t ask, ‘And why are we involved?’ but he was certainly thinking it.

“It’s useful for us to leave a competent if...distracted potential ally here for the New Republic,” Kourr said shortly. “I don’t know how much time you spend out of your snubfighter, but it’s very irritating to steal things in a war zone. Much more fun when no one’s twitching at shadows and carrying thermal detonators in their pockets. Now, move.”

Wedge was starting to have some suspicions about why Kourr was on Cracken’s wall. And why she was still running freely around the galaxy, too.

 _You’re not that bad after all, are you?_ Wedge thought, and meekly followed Wes out the door when she gestured for them to start walking.

“Where are we going?” Wes asked, keeping his voice low.

“Never you mind,” Three rumbled, as the Bith asked, “Just one more stop, right boss?”

“Yes,” Kourr said, to both of them, and Wes and Wedge both shut up and followed the Bith down the hallways.

They must have done something to keep the cameras blanked for the remainder of their raid, because none of them were making any effort at hiding, although they were keeping quiet. There were probably more guards around even now, Wedge thought, and it wouldn’t be long before someone raised the alarm. Not even the Vorb’s security could be so poor as to go more than a standard hour or so without compulsory check-ins.

“Time,” Kourr asked sharply, and Three pushed his sleeve up to reveal a dark chrono, one that didn’t seem to have a display. It must have been set for him in some way—a mod of some kind, Wedge figured—because he acted as if he’d been given some important information and said, “Five minutes. Da’san could do with some extra hands, he says.”

“Go,” Kourr said, and pulled up a map of the palace on a data cube from her pocket. She pinched her fingers delicately at one side and set it spinning, adjusting it with light touches until she had the angle she was looking for.

It was a lot more detailed than what Wedge and Wes had been able to pull up on the holonet. He was a little jealous. They didn’t usually chance missions on this little intel, although beggars couldn’t exactly be choosers.

“Actually,” Kourr said, frowning. “We should all go. Hrm. Aha,” and she tapped a door on the display and nodded firmly. “That will do nicely.”

“Wha—?" Wedge started to ask, and then a big hand settled in the small of his back and shoved him hard into the side of the wall. He was about to ask why they suddenly rated roughing up when a blaster bolt sizzled right through the spot where he’d been standing, and caught him up with current events quickly.

“Sithspit,” Kourr hissed, and twisted around to return fire. It seemed the Vorb’s security had finally realized they had intruders, and their blasters were not set on stun.

“Run,” she yelled, and all five of them took off down the corridor, briefly united in every respect.

* * *

The corridor twisted and turned enough that while they couldn’t quite get clear of pursuit, there were long moments without a clear field of fire, which certainly helped. Wedge raced along, following Kourr, well aware that as much as he might only tentatively trust her, right then she was their only hope of getting out of this in one piece. And she was the only one with a map.

“Right, here,” she said, and stopped all of a sudden.

Wedge blinked. He wasn’t certain, but he thought they had to be close to the hangar area now. They’d certainly been running in the right direction, and there was a certain smell, a taste in the back of his throat that felt like engine oil and hydrospanner grease, familiar and comforting.

“In here,” Kourr said, pushing a door open with her hip and pointing.

Wes stepped in, and Wedge ran into him as he stopped dead when Wedge tried to follow.

“Wha-?” Wedge said as Wes’s indignant, “Wait a minute!” overrode his question, but the slam of the door closing down right at his heels and the thunk of what had to be several locks settling into place around the edges of it answered that question for him neatly enough.

The sudden pitch blackness was almost as disorienting, and Wedge felt himself sway for a moment—maybe he had taken a knock to the head earlier after all—and clutched at Wes until he had his balance.

Before realizing that apparently they were going to be standing that close until someone came along to let them out, because as Wedge shifted and tried to get a little space, his knuckles brushed metal shelving right behind Wes, and there was a thud and clatter as one of them knocked something over with a foot.

“We’re in a closet,” Wes said, disgustedly.

“Yep,” Wedge said. “Good analysis, Wes.”

“Back in a minute!” Kourr called cheerfully from the other side of the door. “Try to keep it down, we’re about to have company!” and then there was the sound of footsteps retreating, and a few seconds later more catching up and then following.

Wedge sighed.

“I’m starting to think we should’ve taken our chances with Galbran security,” Wedge said, quietly. He didn’t think anyone was hanging around to hear them, but it couldn’t hurt to be careful.

“When has one of our spur of the moment plans gone wrong?” Wes asked rhetorically, and there was a pause as they both digested that.

“Yeah, okay, good point,” Wes said. “I think I’m getting too old for this.”

“Same here,” Wedge said.

He tried to shift his weight, aware that one foot was starting to cramp up. He used to be able to sit in zero g for hours without even dozing off, let alone starting to get aches and pains from being constricted in a small cockpit. Not that any starfighter pilot was ever going to truly complain about getting old. It was rare enough, in their line of business.

“Do you think there’s time for a nap?” Wes asked, and Wedge didn’t need to be able to see him to imagine the smile he had to be wearing.

“Isn’t there always, for you?” Wedge replied. His foot wasn’t the only thing that was starting to make him acutely over conscious of the contorted position they were both in. Of how close he was to Wes. This could get embarrassing.

Especially since as soon as Wedge realized he was getting somewhat inappropriately distracted, under the circumstances, it seemed to make it ten times harder to think of anything but that fact.

Ha. Harder.

This was definitely awkward.

Wes shifted his weight, and Wedge bit his lip and ordered himself not to move. Not. At all.

“I think this is smaller than that kludge Kell and Grinder built on Xobome 6,” Wedge said. Trying to distract himself.

“It’s definitely only a one-man sized space,” Wes said. “I think there’s going to be a mop bucket permanently attached to my knee after this. Next time we get kidnapped, let’s make sure they put us somewhere that’s more befitting our reputation and comfort.”

“You want the four star Imperial suite version?” Wedge said, playing along. “With a minibar and free holos as well, huh?”

“Sounds like an improvement over this,” Wes said. He shifted again, slung his arm low around Wedge’s hip and leaned in a little, his breath warm against the side of Wedge’s throat. “That better?”

It was and yet it wasn’t; Wedge felt less constricted, but now he could also feel Wes’s chest move with every inhalation and that was. Distracting.

“I think this is smaller than the Narra’s smuggling compartment,” Wes said. “We always said that was too small for more than one person, even though Falynn claimed it was doable. No one ever claimed the fifty points for it, though.”

Wedge frowned. He didn’t think he’d hit his head, but maybe Wes had, because that sentence made no sense whatsoever.

“Fifty points?”

He could feel the way Wes went momentarily tense—tenser—and then shrugged, relaxing. “There might have been an intra-squadron, uh. Challenge.”

Wedge felt his eyebrows raise. He was usually very much in touch with with was going on with his squadrons, even the things he had to not-know officially. And this was certainly news to him. And if the way that Wes was reacting now meant anything…

“Go on,” Wedge said, wildly curious.

“Not that I would ever mention it in front of my commanding officer,” and it was Wedge’s turn to hide the reflexive flinch, “but certain squadrons might, perhaps, have had a running book on the weirdest places they could possibly get laid.”

Wedge didn’t need any more information than that to have a very good guess as to who was _running_ said book, but he kept his mouth shut and let Wes dig himself deeper. It was entirely possible they were going to get caught by Gilbran security any minute, and they would probably not be willing to wait around for lengthy explanations, and so if Wedge had to be in near-mortal peril on what was meant to have been a gravy mission, he was going to take a couple of minutes to satisfy his curiosity while he still could.

“There was fifty points for the smuggling compartment. Plus five if you could do it without bribing Cubber. The, uh. Highest value item was inside an X-Wing.”

Wedge tried to imagine that and found his imagination lacking.

“How—? Did anyone?”

“There was a claim, but it was challenged on the grounds of whether the rules required the canopy to be closed. Or not.”

“Oh,” Wedge said faintly.

“It got less funny when people started settling down,” Wes said, and Wedge felt him shrug. Didn’t dare ask how many points Wes might have collected. He was better off not knowing. “But, like I said. Not that I’d mention in front of anyone of higher than Lieutenant rank.”

“Luckily for all parties concerned, I was temporarily deaf,” Wedge joked. Tried to joke. Was horribly certain it was falling flat.

And he couldn’t quite help himself, it seemed, because after a pregnant pause, Wedge found himself adding, “So, did you ever—I mean. Actually, no, don’t tell me.”

“Did I ever what?” Wes asked. Damn. Too much to hope he’d let Wedge out of this with all of his dignity intact.

“Try the X-Wing thing,” Wedge specified. His imagination had apparently recovered and was now suggesting lurid 3D visions of that possibility, which wasn’t helping matters any in terms of the ludicrously small supply closet they were locked in together. Wedge was having trouble catching his breath. Surely it couldn’t actually be air tight. He wished it wasn’t quite so warm on Galbraith. Or that he was wearing fewer layers.

“I figured it wasn’t possible,” Wes said lightly.

“Maybe we should check,” Wedge replied, and then snapped his mouth closed with an audible click of teeth that would probably have alerted any real stormtroopers from fifty paces.

Wes went even more still than he’d been to start with. Wedge tried to remind himself humans needed oxygen and he should breathe.

“Wedge Antilles,” Wes said, lightly. Too lightly. “Are you making a pass?”

“Would it be okay if I was?” Wedge replied. There were a lot of reasons it might not be. Maybe even should not be. He still wanted to know what Wes thought, much more than he cared about any of those other reasons.

Wes took his time thinking about it, silent as he did so, and it was that which told Wedge more than anything how serious he was. If he wasn’t genuinely considering it he would've made a joke already, and they would've moved on—figuratively speaking—and Wedge would only slightly want to drown himself in the 'fresher instead of finding himself holding his breath waiting for the verdict.

Wes’s voice was as careful as Wedge had ever heard him, and very definite as he took a deep breath and said quietly, “that might be be okay.”

Okay was good. Okay was much better than Wedge was going to let himself hope.

“Oh,” Wedge said. He couldn’t see Wes, but he had a fairly good idea of where he was; a pilot’s spatial awareness coupled with the familiarity of years, and it seemed only right to take that moment to lean in even closer, to feel the warmth coming off Wes’s skin, to approach the curve of his lips as he leaned in for a kiss.

Their lips brushed once, slightly off center, and Wedge bit back a groan, couldn’t restrain the heartfelt, “Wes, your mouth—" before he dipped in to try a second time to find it.

And pulled away just as fast when there was a sudden and extremely loud bang just outside the door of the closet.

‘Sonic grenade,’ Wedge thought in the back of his mind, and then, nonsensically, ‘it couldn’t have waited another ten seconds??’

“We need to get out of here,” Wedge said, laser-focused on the actual problem at hand again.

He’d lost his taste for waiting for Kourr to come back and rescue them. There was every chance she and her crew had escaped already anyway, he was under no illusions about how much they were going to go out of their way for someone who’d blundered into their operation by almost-accident.

“Yeah, I think so too,” Wes said, a little grimly.

There were some ambiguous shuffling noises and then suddenly, a light, somewhere near Wedge’s midsection.

“Data pad,” Wes said unnecessarily. “Forgot I still had it.”

“Well, let’s see what we’ve got,” Wedge said, and waited for Wes to carefully angle the data pad screen so that it illuminated the space they were in. The buckets and other miscellaneous canisters at their feet. The items on the shelves behind them, a typical supply closet, with some extras that almost certainly had to be related to the proximity to the hangar.

They both saw it at the same time.

“Ooh,” Wes said, and Wedge gave him a grin that was all teeth.

“We’re going to have to get the door open again first,” Wedge said. “Otherwise the flashback’ll kill us faster than a squad full of stormies.”

“I think if we both try to force it we might be able to pop the hinges,” Wes said, angling the data pad around the edges of the door. It couldn’t be that strongly reinforced, it was just meant to be a storage area. Meant to keep things that weren’t supposed to be stored in the hangar directly, or chemicals for cleaning the area just outside it. Not actually intended to withstand anything much in the way of force.

“So, the plan is, uh. We pop the door, and—?” Wedge started. Things were going to move quickly once they were actually out there and involved in the action again. They both knew better than to waste planning time. “Sure you’re up for this, Wes?”

Wes shrugged, his features backlit in the glow from his data pad, the grin stretching across his lips entirely predatory.

"Well, we either sit and wait, or we take these flare guns and do something really stupid."

As if there was ever any doubt about what they were going to do, Wedge thought. “On three,” he said, and the two of them braced to throw themselves at the top corner of the door. That should give them the best leverage.

Just as it whooshed open again, sending them both tumbling at the feet of a familiar Ortolan.

* * *

 

“Yes, yes, he’s very impressive,” Kourr said, chivying them back to their feet.

She didn’t complain about either of them reaching back into the closet to arm themselves with the flares, though, from which Wedge surmised that Operation: Blow This Joint and Get Out of Here was not proceeding quite according to plans any more.

“You have any kind of extraction plan?” Wedge asked. Something about being surer of his ground with Wes now was also making it easier to assert himself in this entirely messed up situation. Probably the fact he wasn’t just a little distracted anymore.

“We get past those blue shirts,” Kourr jerked a thumb in the direction of the corridor Wedge thought they’d come clattering back down, “we steal a shuttle, we get back to the spaceport, we profit.”

“Well, it has the benefit of simplicity,” Wes said with a shrug, and lifted the flare gun onto his shoulder. “There’s fuel tanks in there somewhere, right?”

Kourr frowned at him. Three—now sporting a streak of grease and blood down one side of his face, and a blaster crease in his bicep that he was ignoring—seemed to be on Wes’s level, though. “Yeah. Not too near the door, in case of emergencies, but there’s a bunded off area just by where the Vorb’s security has bunched up.”

Wedge got it then, too. “How convenient,” he said. “We’ve probably only got a few minutes left before reinforcements get here from the city, too. Let’s get a move on.”

“Who died and made you King, Antilles?” Kourr grumbled, but she let them start edging back towards the hangar anyway.

Then again, Wedge figured, they were in front of her, which meant even if they were armed now, they were also acting as human shields.

It seemed like their best option for getting out of there in one piece, and with their cover intact, too. Wedge wasn’t looking forward to reporting all of this whenever they got back to Coruscant.

On the plus side, he was now much more confident they were going to make it back there.

* * *

They’d regrouped just around the corner from the entrance to the hangar, and a hurried conversation in hushed tones got them all on the same page; the two Ortolans—which Wedge hadn’t noticed until that point, one of whom must have been their missing slicer earlier—and Wedge and Wes all set to charge around the corner acting like they were going to make a suicide run on the barricade and firing flares into the corner where the fuel was stored.

“You’re not actually going to hit the fuel, are you?” the Bith asked them skeptically. “This is all over very quickly if you do.”

“Wes is one of the best shots I’ve ever seen,” Wedge said with a shrug. “These flare guns aren’t that accurate, sure, but he’ll make it work.”

“Good,” she said, and, “You’re still in front of me,” grumbled the closest Ortolan. He hadn’t been happy about incorporating Wes and Wedge from the very start, but given the dark smudge on his face that Wedge thought denoted a deep bruise, he was probably holding a grudge about getting hit back in the tapcaf.

“Let’s do this,” Wedge said, feeling the ticking chrono in the back of his head counting inevitably closer to reinforcements coming up on their six, or the nest of Gilbrans in the hangar deciding to make a charge of their own.

* * *

Like most plans, it didn’t work out quite as planned, but it was close enough, and none of them was more than a little scraped up by the time they all tumbled into the Vorb’s private shuttle. Kourr slapped the door closed on a flurry of laser bolts from the security forces who hadn’t scattered when they’d seen a band of lunatics start firing towards the fuel tanker, but thankfully their aim seemed to be as good as their self-preservation instincts, and nothing came close to hitting any of them or any of the more critical parts of the shuttle.

Wes slid into the pilot’s seat without letting anyone argue the assignment, and went through an abbreviated checklist at top speed, shoving the throttle forward to lift them off and get them out the hangar door before anyone woke up enough to try and set any of the anti-aircraft countermeasures.

The shuttle did draw some fire, but well within the bounds of what its shields could handle, and Wes set it sideslipping and juking automatically as well, which put most of the blasts from the lone functioning battery wide of their ship.

They did set some of the ornamental trees outside on fire, which Wedge thought absently was a shame. They’d been very well kept up, and he’d been based on Coruscant long enough by then to have a Core-worlder’s appreciation of trees and plant life.

Wedge didn’t think he took a full breath until they’d made it over the first set of rolling hills between the city and the palace, hugging the ground in order to not register on any of the monitors either in the city or from space.

“I assume everyone got out with what they needed?” he asked, feeling oddly compelled to push for a post-mission briefing, even if it hadn’t strictly been his mission.

Three hummed, and then said, “Yep,” gesturing at the canvas bag piled carelessly by the shuttle door. He and the unfamiliar Ortolan had been carrying it; Wedge had just assumed it was weaponry, or maybe something or someone they couldn’t leave behind.

He went over and peeled back the opening of the bag, eyes widening as he took in the dull gleam of green-toned armor, the pieces he could make out certainly sounding very much like Luke’s descriptions of the bounty hunter on Tatooine. Surely it wasn’t really Fett’s armor.

“Huh,” Wedge said, and he looked over at Wes to get his response.

Which meant he had a perfect view for Kourr drawing her own blaster and oh-so-casually using it to stun Wes right where he sat at the shuttle's controls.

Wedge yelped in outrage and started to throw himself toward her, but it felt like he was moving in slow motion, and before he was even close enough to reach he felt all his muscles lock up, teeth buzzing, pain rushing sharply through him before the shuttle floor rose up to meet him and darkness swamped him.

* * *

When he woke up, a post-stun headache was crowding at Wedge’s temples. He couldn’t work up a vast amount of outrage, though, as the last thought he’d had before passing out had been the rueful acknowledgment that waking up again was not going to be a given.

Apparently Kourr wasn’t quite as ruthless as she might want people to believe, though.

Wedge didn’t think that her crew would have actually left them behind—there was too much dangerous information that he and Wes would be able to share if so—but it was still a relief to look around and see that they’d been stashed in a hotel room. When Wedge looked out the view screen he recognized the area they were in; downtown, not all that far from the tapcaf this whole adventure had taken a departure sideways from the night before.

They’d even dumped him and Wes onto the beds; a belated and minor kindness, but one Wedge appreciated all the same, given the way his hips and shoulder ached. That would be worse if he’d woken up in a heap on the floor.

When he looked over at the table between the beds it was to find Wes’s data pad, cursor blinking innocently, open to the composition function.

“What’s it say?” Wes asked, his voice croaky as he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Wedge relaxed a little more at that confirmation that Wes was all right, too.

"'Figured we could give you a ride back to the spaceport, since you watched our backs and all'", Wedge read.

“That's nice of them," Wes said insincerely, but he sat down on the bed right beside Wedge so he could lean in and read it with Wedge anyway. Wedge felt his cheeks heat, but leaned right back into Wes. He could have this. It was okay.

“Thanks for the loan of your access cards, we didn’t even charge all that much lum to your accounts. If you’re worried about your cover, as far as our slicer can tell, no one recognized you. Enjoy the rest of your stay on Gilbraith! PS This room has been charged to your cards, so you should make the most of it. We did provide some assistance. Have fun!”

It was signed with a P.K., which Wedge assumed was meant to stand for Pa Kourr, but who knew, really.

He checked his back pocket almost out of habit and was mostly pleased to find the shape of his wallet there, missing a few credchits but otherwise intact. He didn't even want to know what else they probably used his ID to access because he was sure he'd be hearing about it from Cracken at length.

That wasn’t all that was in there, though, and Wedge’s eyes widened as he spotted the prophylactic tucked into the pocket, which was certainly not in there the last time Wedge looked. He had a sudden dark inkling about what Kourr meant by ‘have fun’, a conclusion which was absolutely not going to make it into his report. The boffins at HQ could struggle with that one.

Wes was checking his own pockets as Wedge did, and said, sounding perplexed, "huh, they left me a—huh." It looked like a blaster, but when Wedge examined it more closely it was obvious that it was one for children, that just shot water.

“I’ve always wanted one of these,” Wes said.

“Of course you did,” Wedge said with a sigh. “I guess they didn't need to know you long to work out what you like."

"I'm a simple man with simple pleasures," Wes said airily, and then raised an eyebrow, looking over at Wedge with his eyes sparkling, and Wedge just fell into those depths, deep brown, as warm and familiar as the best Corellian whiskey, and just dangerous if you pushed it too far, but so, so good. "So what'd our blue friends leave you as a present, then?"

Wedge blushed, and wished they were in a less well-lit area so he could actually hide that fact. Wes just looked delighted, and said, not as under his breath as he might have hoped, "Oh, this has to be good. C'mon Wedge, spill it already."

Wedge sighed again. "Uh, you remember a couple hours ago in the supply closet at the governor's palace?"

Wes stilled, although you would have had to know him well to see the tension in his body then, the fine tremor of his hands before he inhaled carefully and got himself under control again, trying to look carefree and blase as usual. "That was a…pretty memorable location, yeah."

So he wasn't going to help Wedge out there at all. That was fine, that was probably fair enough. Wedge could do the heavy lifting there. "I don’t know if they had bugged the area and heard anything, or if it was just a very good guess. Sithspit, Kourr could even have some Jedi powers, it wouldn’t surprize me. But I was thinking, uh. We could pick up that conversation again?"

"It wasn't much of a conversation, Wedge," Wes said, although he wasn’t nearly as confident as Wedge might have expected in this situation.

Not as enthusiastically over-the-top as he'd imagined. Because for better or worse, he'd imagined this moment more than he liked to admit.

Wes paused for a moment before going on. "I mean, we thought we were about to die, that looms pretty large in the memory banks, but I don't remember you saying a whole lot. Just something about my mouth. I mean, you're usually telling me it's making too much noise."

Wedge could feel himself sweating, couldn't help imagining again all the other noises Wes could make if this worked out. He wouldn't be complaining about Wes's volume or stamina then.

"I was going to say it's pretty," Wedge said after a moment. Throwing himself head first into that metaphorical blind tunnel. Whether it wound up in a trash compactor or somewhere more pleasant was going to have to be in the hands of the Force, then.

He'd been taking risks all his life, risking his skin and his sanity and his life; more often and more importantly the lives of his friends and his squadron and his command too. How much harder could it be to risk this as well? Even if this time they weren’t probably about to die.

A tiny smile tugged at the corners of Wes's lips, and Wedge felt the sarlacc-sized knot in his stomach start to relax, just a little. "Oh," Wes said, and he touched the ball of his thumb to his lower lip almost subconsciously, the tip of his tongue darting out to moisten it.

"What I'm trying to say," Wedge said. "Is, uh. I'm flirting with you?"

"That a question?" Wes asked, apparently compelled to be a smart ass in literally every situation. Wedge couldn't complain really, it was part of what he liked about Wes.

"This isn't how I meant to bring this up," Wedge said a little helplessly. "There were going to be drinks and a much better speech and no scantily clad dancers and definitely no vigilante slicers using us for their own ends first."

He'd had a plan. It had alternate options for the three most likely responses he'd expected Wes to have and an escape plan if he'd needed it. Admittedly, that had been going back to his own room and communing with a bottle of Whyrren's Reserve until he felt like he could face his friend again, preferably without Wes needing to put in for a transfer to another unit. But it had still been a plan. He was damned if he could remember any of it now, though.

"You had a plan, huh?" Wes said, and then his eyes widened. "You did have a plan. Sithspit, Wedge, you didn't need to—to take me anywhere special and try to be all romantic."

"I didn't?" Wedge echoed uncertainly.

"You're not great at romance," Wes said. A little unnecessarily, Wedge thought. It wasn't like he'd had a lot of opportunity to practice. "You're better at seizing the moment. Flying by the seat of your pants. Getting in someone else's pants?"

Wes grinned properly at him then, letting just the faintest hint of a leer cross his expression.

Wedge relaxed, feeling like he'd found the right approach at last. "So, while we're talking about your pants…" he said, and turned so he was facing Wes more directly, letting himself actually look the way he'd wanted to and been unsure he should or could. "I think they'd look better off. On the floor."

Wes snorted. "The line is 'they'd look better on my bedroom floor' but you're terrible at this so I'll let it slide."

"Yeah, only one of us has ever needed bad pick-up lines," Wedge argued.

"Is there such a thing as a good pick-up line?" Wes pondered aloud.

"Wes," Wedge said. "Shut up and let me kiss you already."

Wes did.

Kissing Wes was just as much a leap into the unknown as it was as warm and welcoming as Wedge could ever have hoped. And they weren’t due to have any of their training sessions starting up again for a couple hours yet, so they had more than enough time to practice that. And some slightly more advanced maneuvers.

"So am I gonna be the one who has to say it?" Wes asked, a couple of hours later, lying down on the bed next to Wedge, tucked warmly along his side, and only about 80% as smug as usual.

"Say what?" Wedge replied, blinking at him.

"Nice rearguard action, Wedge."

"Wes?" Wedge said, rolling on top of him and letting his weight push Wes down into the mattress, his eyes locked on Wedge's, grinning easily at him, affectionate and appreciative. "Shut up."

"Yub yu—" Wes started to say, before Wedge shut him up again in the most effective way possible.

That wasn't going to be something he could do any time they were on duty, but that didn't mean he couldn't enjoy it thoroughly in their down time.

**Author's Note:**

> There's a couple of easter eggs sprinkled through this; if you feel like trainspotting there's more than a few Leverage references, and a couple from Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan-verse, too. :D  
> Aurebesh from [here](http://www.aurebesh.swtor-tools.com/).


End file.
